MSN Web Messenger

» see webmessenger.live.com as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the last words ~

MSN was the entire chat layer in Turkey from about 2002 onward, and by my university years it was simply assumed, the way a phone number is assumed. What MSN Web Messenger solved was the gap between having the account and having a machine that would run the client. A university lab PC, or any machine where you were not the administrator, would refuse the installer, and from August 2004 there was a page you could sign in to instead.

It was deliberately smaller than the real client. No file transfer and no webcam, and the people on your list could tell: depending on their Messenger version your name either carried a small globe instead of the normal icon or had the word Web stuck on the end of it. You were visibly chatting from the stripped-down door.

Microsoft launched it in August 2004 and ran it for almost five years. It went off on 30 June 2009, announced on the company's Windows Live blog, by which point the function had moved to the place where most people already had a tab open all day, which was the Hotmail inbox.

~ the record ~

~ what microsoft was defending ~

Microsoft had a reason beyond kindness to cafe users. The Messenger network's value was the contact list, and every blocked installer was a user who might open AIM's web page or Yahoo's instead, or later Meebo, which signed you into all of them at once from one tab. A browser door kept the account inside Microsoft's network on hardware Microsoft could not touch.

There were also regional services in places like Taiwan and Singapore carrying the Windows Live Web Messenger name that were something else underneath, built on Messenger Connect rather than on this product. That is one reason the history of the thing is confusing to trace.

~ the rebuild nobody got to use ~

In September 2007 Microsoft started on a second version under the name Windows Live Web Messenger, with the Windows Live 2.0 interface and tabbed conversations inside what it called a conversation workspace. It went to internal beta testers and was never released publicly. On 30 October 2008 Microsoft discontinued it and moved its capabilities into Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Live Contacts, and several features the beta had, tabbed conversations among them, did not survive the move.

~ the inbox took over ~

The 2008 date is the one the encyclopedia infobox prints, and it belongs to a beta no member of the public could reach. The product people actually used, MSN Web Messenger, lasted until 30 June 2009. This grave takes that as the death, because a service dies when the people using it lose it.

By the 2010 Wave 4 release, Messenger sign-in lived in the header of every Windows Live property, so chat became a strip across the top of your mail instead of somewhere you went. webmessenger.live.com exists now only in the archive.

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